Alex Dreyfus Discusses the Changes to the GPL Schedule

Poker players and fans were eagerly anticipating the restart of the Global Poker League season next week, but they will have to wait a bit longer now. MediaRex CEO Alex Dreyfus, the creator of the GPL, revealed earlier this week that the restart date will be pushed back a month, and there will also be changes with the playoffs. Originally, the semi-finals were slated to take place at Twitch Con in San Diego, with the finals going across the pond to London. The new plan is to go back to Las Vegas where the successful summer series took place. For Dreyfus, the move was a way of scaling back in the GPL’s inaugural season.

“Playoffs & Finals merged into one event, for the first season, for logistic and pragmatism reason. While we succeeded in pulling together the League from scratch, from an idea to something concrete, there is still some work in the next years to make it better.”

Dreyfus continued on that thought: “Therefore, we believe people are not ready for a big live event. We can’t do in six months what E-Sports did in 15 years. We shifted about our inspiration to what Turner/TBS did with E-League, with more focus on content rather than live events, and I believe that’s what we should focus on for the next six to nine months.”

While the decision looks bad on paper, the move was likely done in order to avoid a potentially bigger disaster. With 40% of the GPL audience located in the US and unlikely to travel to London for the finals, the potential of having the finals in a scarcely filled arena was a very real possibility. Dreyfus has been on the record many times saying that they are nowhere near where they want to be in 10 years, and this is a clear indication of that.

Dreyfus also told us that the push back of the restart was connected to moving the playoffs as well. The GPL learned the hard way that it was tough to run their matches while the widely popular SCOOP series was being played online at Pokerstars, and Dreyfus saw a similar problem coming up with the WCOOP starting up later this month, along with the always huge EPT Barcelona, where a good amount of GPL players will be playing.

“We learned that EPT and SCOOP did damage to us in term of audience, and that Burning Man is a problem to get some of our players, so it made sense for us to postpone a few weeks. This also allows our team: 1. to rest 2. to work. We planned four weeks during summer, and it was not enough, especially with all summer holidays.”

On the bright side of things, the GPL could have caught a huge break at the end of the WSOP. One of the commentators for online play, Griffin Benger, made the November Nine, and will be set to appear on the biggest stage in poker TV in a couple of months.

“I’m so pleased for Griffin, he deserves it. On a GPL level, I’m very proud that he said that GPL helped him to achieve this amazing score, because of following all the wizards of GPL. What were the odds to have one of our lead commentators to be November Nine ?”

Dreyfus is used to hearing critiques from the online world, and this will only be ramping up with these changes to the schedule and locations. He appears ready to take all of them on, and urges players and fans to keep the bigger picture in mind when it comes to the Global Poker League.

“We got a lot of good press and a lot of skeptical people, I acknowledge it and it’s fair. It can’t always be blue sky. The only big change is the live Finals not being held in London, but people have to see the big picture, over five years. For us, year one is about building a platform, a framework and making it happen. It’s done. Now we need to work out details to make it better, and it will take two to three years. We are at 1% of our potential and we need time to grow it.”

With a month now until the GPL restart, we will be rolling out interviews with several of the managers to get their thoughts on how their teams, and the league, are going so far, so be sure to stay tuned for those!